About Stratfor

Our Company

As the world’s leading geopolitical intelligence platform, Stratfor brings global events into valuable perspective, empowering businesses, governments and individuals to more confidently navigate their way through an increasingly complex international environment.

Our Mission

To empower members to understand and successfully navigate an ever-changing and complex global environment.

Our Methodology

Stratfor develops comprehensive, independent and unbiased analyses by examining global events through the lens of geopolitics and our proprietary methodology. That allows us to interpret the significance of today’s global events, cut through the noise, inform decision making and develop a more accurate view of the future.

Our Members

Globally engaged individuals, professionals, Fortune 500 companies, universities and organizations across an array of industries turn to Stratfor for accurate, actionable geopolitical intelligence and analysis that helps them make sense of an increasingly complex world.

Our People

Stratfor’s team of geopolitical analysts and professionals are core to the strategic advantage we provide our members. They consume a flood of open-source information each day to unearth emerging trends, challenge assumptions and reconcile conflicting truths to produce objective analysis and forecasts

Our History

In 1996, a small group of political scientists and entrepreneurs decided to move their project, The Center for Geopolitical Studies at Louisiana State University, into the private sector. They traded Baton Rouge for Austin, Texas, an emerging center for innovation, and formed Stratfor around the idea that geopolitical analysis and accurate forecasting of global trends would be valuable to individuals and organizations seeking clarity and informed insight in today’s increasingly complicated international environment.

Our Values

Overview

At Stratfor, we don't take values and standards lightly. For many years, the company's cultural values were a bit like the British constitution — widely known and understood but not written down anywhere. As the company has continued to grow and hire new Stratforians, however, it was only logical to record and share our values internally and externally. In many places, values are little more than meaningless platitudes, but in an environment as intellectually demanding and rigorous as Stratfor's, we live by them every day.

Worth noting is just how the values were cultivated and refined. Our longest-serving and most senior staff reflected on the intrinsic components of the company's attitude and beliefs and then assembled a cross-departmental team to finesse their initial thoughts into what you see below. Every team within the company was represented, at every level, in developmental debates. Each and every voice carried equal weight and a rigorous process of review led to a refreshingly straightforward consensus in almost every case.

That alignment is important because it reveals the extent to which many of the values were simply a reflection of their permeation across the organization. Beyond the innate qualities that were identified and burnished, much thought was given to the extent that values were aspirational. We are not naive enough to think that we do everything perfectly, and in many cases, we felt it was important to set the bar high because we do our best work when challenged to reach greater heights than we thought possible.

What follows are Stratfor's Values, with accompanying short descriptions. These values are not merely a veneer, they represent the DNA of the company.

Teamwork

Stratfor's strength is its people. The ability to work together in a complex environment, to analyze, refine and distribute critical global insights, requires coordination and collaboration at all levels. Individuals and teams must remain agile, yet be able to rapidly cohere around critical projects and objectives. Stratfor employees are fast learners, open and receptive to new ideas and concepts, and passionate about their work. Training, coaching and mentoring are crucial to Stratfor's success and employees seek to inspire and challenge each other on a consistent basis.

Respect

When we talk about respect, we don't simply mean for each other, though that is obviously essential. We maintain a deep respect for our subscribers, customers and partners and seek to exceed — rather than meet — their expectations. We also have a deep respect for critical thinking and the new ideas and concepts generated by robust analytic discourse. Learning how to give and receive constructive feedback is a crucial component of being at Stratfor, as is the ability to achieve perspective and see others' points of view.

Accountability

Everyone at Stratfor is accountable for their activity, output and conduct. Given the fast-moving and ever-changing nature of world events, it is essential for team members to be proactive and forward-thinking. Complacency is the adversary of innovation and every individual at Stratfor is expected to take the initiative and pursue inventive solutions. When we set ourselves a goal, we always follow through, knowing that the easiest path to success is very rarely the correct one.

Communication

It is a commonplace human error to assume that just because something is known to one person, it is known to all. The ability to accurately and rapidly transmit information is a hallmark of what we do. We harness a legion of tools and techniques to help us communicate effectively within the organization and, more importantly, outwardly to the very people, organizations, and entities that rely on our analysis. To communicate well is to be open and receptive, and to trust the intentions of others, without barriers or boundaries.

Excellence

The pursuit of excellence underpins everything Stratfor does. We rigorously interrogate information and seek analytically unassailable outcomes. At every level, all staff members are encouraged to challenge convention and think competitively to achieve exceptional results. We are thought-leaders. We are as comfortable responding quickly and precisely to breaking events as we are crafting 100-page reports. Operating at a time in history when hyperbole has become the norm and basic facts are contested, we prize our reputation for thoroughness, dependability and unprejudiced work.